


the chords to my heart

by Lire_Casander



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Music, Angst, Anxiety, Fluff, M/M, Mentions of Max being in a coma, Past Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-01-29 11:41:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21409606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lire_Casander/pseuds/Lire_Casander
Summary: Alex has always hated flying on commercial flights, but this plane to London is bound to change his life.
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 40
Kudos: 153





	1. first pentagram

**Author's Note:**

> Written for this prompt: _How about an au where Michael is a folksinger and Alex is a fighter pilot and they meet on an airplane from NM to London. Alex has heard Michael on the radio and likes him, but isn't that familiar with his music. Their flight has to land and they get grounded in a lightning storm and it's such a bad storm they just get stuck there in the plane on the tarmac and in the airport for hours and they play cards (bonus points if Michael get his guitar out and sings to Alex)_ given by an anon over at my tumblr.
> 
> A couple of details about this fic: there’s actually a flight from Dallas to London that lands in the UK at 6:50 local time, and there are flights to Dallas from both Roswell and Albuquerque (where Michael boards his first flight even if I didn’t say it explicitly). Michael being able to play the guitar despite his scars is inspired by Devil Driver’s guitarist Neal Tiemann, who broke his hand at 18 and still became one of the most talented guitar players I’ve ever listened to.
> 
> Be sure to stay tuned because there will be a follow-up to this sometime in the near future. This is unbeta'ed.

Alex hates flying to Europe on commercial flights. In fact, he hates flying on commercial flights, but this is his life now. He’s used to the efficiency of the Air Force flights, but now that he’s a retired pilot on a personal trip he can’t use any of the official sources to travel around the world. He’s profited from vet discounts, so he will be traveling Flagship First from the moment he steps into his connecting flight in Dallas.

Which doesn’t seem to be happening soon, seeing as his flight from Roswell to Dallas has been delayed and he’s going to have to run through the airport when he had anticipated a long, nice commute where he would have waited for _at least _three hours at Dallas Fort Worth International, enjoying the shops and the restaurants, and buying some treats for his little niece. Instead, he finds himself on a plane that lands within a little margin for him to reach his flight to London; he can’t run, not with his prosthesis, so he’s resigned to actually missing his flight when he sees an attendant waiting on the side when he slides off the finger, holding a sign that reads _Captain Alexander Manes_. He approaches her, his leg almost giving out beneath him after being trapped in a local, narrow flight for two and a half hours.

“Captain,” she greets him when he reaches her. “Please, follow me this way. We’re really sorry that your flight got delayed, and we don’t want you to miss your flight to London. I will be accompanying you throughout the airport so you get to your boarding door in time.”

And that’s how Alex finds himself sitting on a golf cart, driven through the airport corridors while the smiling woman keeps talking to him about the benefits of the American Airlines Club program. He nods his head politely, tuning her out as he’s already daydreaming of the seven-hour nap he’s planning to take once the plane takes off. The flight attendant leaves him with his handbag right in front of the queue lining up to board the plane at door 4, and he walks to the fast line from where he’s supposed to board his flight – after all, being a war veteran has its perks sometimes.

There’s another man on the line, his back to Alex, curly hair that gleams under the fluorescent lights of the airport, and a guitar case strapped across his back. Alex blinks at the slightly taller man who’s swaying to the rhythm of a music no one else is hearing, but before he can decide whether the other man is weird or simply eccentric, the queue moves. In almost no time, Alex is at his seat getting ready for the long flight ahead.

He sinks into his seat and fastens his seatbelt when the captain announces they’re taking off. Alex doesn’t look around the area, but given the lack of noise he thinks he might the one – or one of the few – passengers on Flagship First. He closes his eyes, crosses his arms over his chest, and heaves a sigh. _Next time I open my eyes_, he tells himself, _I’ll already be in London_. Alex feels the plane vibrate under his heels, and he braces himself for the inevitable pull in his gut when they leave the ground and jump into the air. No matter how many times he flies, the nerves he gets in the pit of his stomach never fade away.

The plain halts inexplicably, and Alex opens his eyes with a groan. “What the fuck?” he asks rhetorically to the silence surrounding him. He sits up on the comfortable seat, squirming when his prosthetic bumps into the walls surrounding the reclining seat.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” comes the captain’s voice through the static on the speakers. Alex listens in dread. “Following a request from air traffic control, we’ve discontinued our takeoff run due to an upcoming electric storm. We’re just waiting for an improvement in the weather to start our flight. We’ll be taking off as soon as possible. Meanwhile, we invite you to take this opportunity to relax and enjoy the service. Thank you.”

“Great,” Alex hears from a few rows in front of him. When he peeks out of the seat back, he sees the curls that have caught his attention before boarding. “Now we’ll be late for everything. Just perfect.”

“Well, you’re not the only one who’s going to be late for something,” Alex pipes in. The man with the curls turns around, and Alex is struck with the vision of hazel eyes that bore holes in his soul. That face rings a bell, but Alex can’t quite place where or when he’s seen this man before the boarding queue. 

“Guess we’ll just have to wait and wish that the delay isn’t that long.”

“You sound so positive.”

“I have to be,” Alex sighs. “This is the second of my flights that gets delayed today.”

“You’re a bit of jinx, aren’t you?”

Alex should be insulted by this stranger’s joke, but he finds himself smiling against his own will. “Yeah, you could say so.”

“Michael Guerin,” the stranger says, standing up and walking next to Alex with his right hand stretched out.

“Michael Guerin, the singer?” Alex repeats in awe. Of course the man seems familiar to him – Michael Guerin is one of the most successful of a new generation of folk singers born and raised in New Mexico. His brother Flint has yet to stop humming Guerin’s new single under his breath. “Oh, sorry,” he continues when he realizes he’s staring. “I suppose you get that a lot. I’m Alex. Alex Manes.”

“Nice to meet you, Alex Manes,” Guerin winks at him as they shake hands. “Mind if I sit here?” He gestures toward the seat next to Alex’s, that’s currently unoccupied.

“No, by all means.” Alex feels his cheeks heating up; he doesn’t know why he’s reacting like a teenager in the face of this Michael Guerin. As famous as he may be, to Alex Guerin looks like any other curly haired man in the world – only a tiny bit attractive.

It’s the first time in years that Alex allows himself to check someone out. Not even after _Don’t Ask Don’t Tell _was over did he give himself permission to be out in the open. Too much to risk, too dangerous with his father still looming over him like the sword of Damocles, a shadow too dark to forget about.

And yet here he is, checking out golden curls and hazel eyes and a thousand-watt smile that could light up an entire town. Alex should be ashamed of himself, his father’s voice hammer into his head, but he shrugs it off.

He watches as Guerin sits down, his eyes catching on the scars on Guerin’s left hand. Alex has to hold back the need to touch them; he’s never crossed that boundary with anyone, and he’s not going to start walking down that path with a complete stranger. “So, Alex,” Guerin says once he’s settled. “What brings you to London?”

“My brother lives there,” he explains. “He’s been working there for seven years. Air Force.” He doesn’t know what has compelled him to add that bit of information. “You?”

“Air Force, huh?” Guerin smiles lopsidedly. “I’m trying to see if I can get some nice gigs out of this trip,” he explains. “My sister’s already there waiting for me to catch up on the endless interviews she’s managed to fit in a tight two-days schedule.”

“You’re only going to be in London for two days?”

“Yeah,” Guerin confirms. “That’s the life on the road. If we get the gigs, I will be back in Europe for at least three months.”

During the following three hours, until the plane definitely takes off, Alex learns a lot about Michael Guerin – how he became a folk singer to honor his older brother Max who’s in a coma after a raid gone awry during his last shift as a Sheriff Deputy before becoming a father, how his childhood in foster care had shaped the way his lyrics always speak about long lost loves that never meet happy endings. Guerin doesn’t share the story behind the scars on his left hand, the spasms that he can’t hide whenever he flails too strong, and Alex doesn’t push. It’s not as if he’s going to share his own story of pain and grief over the loss of a limb back during his time serving in the sands of Iraq.

When the captain announces they’re getting off, both of them whoop, arms flailing in the air, Guerin’s curls all over his forehead, and Alex can’t help himself. He reaches out and brushes one of the rebel curls behind Guerin’s ear. Alex has leaned into Guerin’s personal space, and he’s ready for rejection, but Guerin just stares back at him and wets his lips. Alex feels like he could lean in even further, even try for a kiss – and he isn’t sure where _that_ thought has come from – but Guerin sits up straight once again and produces a deck of cards. “Some mock poker?” he offers. Alex frowns but plays along, even if he doesn’t know what kind of game mock poker is.

They end up playing some rounds of the game before the exhaustion of the delay catches up with them. Alex yawns before he can stop himself, and blushes when Guerin laughs at him. “Seems you’re tired, Private.”

“It’s Captain, cowboy,” he jabs back. Guerin’s smile brightens the whole space; Alex could watch him smile for days on end. “And yeah, I’m dead on my feet. I was up before dawn.”

“Then go to sleep,” Guerin suggests. “I can wake you up when it’s time to land.”

“Aren’t you going to sleep a bit?”

“I almost never sleep on planes,” Guerin confesses. “It freaks me out and I don’t know why. But I could sing you a lullaby.”

“Would you?” Alex wonders, and Guerin nods.

“Get comfy, Private,” he says, winking at him. “You’ll be out like a light in no time.”

Alex doesn’t remember anything after hearing Guerin’s voice singing a few lines of the same children’s lullaby he sings to his niece whenever he gets to be with her.

“We’ve already started our descent procedure into London Heathrow airport. We expect to land at ten to six, as scheduled. The weather in London is rainy and the temperature is ten degrees Celsius. We wish you a pleasant stay in London and we hope to see you again very soon. On behalf of all our crew, thank you for choosing our company as your airline today.”

The voice of the captain startles Alex awake. For a second he doesn’t know where he is, but he feels warm and well rested, much unlike these past months ever since his discharge. He has his head on someone’s chest, and he freaks out for a moment before remembering that he fell asleep on Michael Guerin of all people. When he moves quietly and looks up, he can see Guerin’s looking down at him, eyes half-lidded with sleep as well. “Morning, sunshine,” Guerin greets him. Alex chuckles.

“Morning to you too, Mr I Don’t Sleep On Planes,” he jokes.

“Yeah, about that,” Guerin replies. He rubs his neck absent-mindedly. “Seems you’re a comfortable pillow.”

“Not sure if that was a compliment,” Alex squints his eyes at Guerin in a mock frown, but ends up bursting in laughter at Guerin’s sheepish stance. “C’mon, cowboy, it seems our flight’s finally landing.”

They gather the few belongings that they hadn’t checked and await patiently for the doors to open and free them from the narrow space. Alex checks he hasn’t left anything behind, and he sees out of the corner of his eye how Guerin is holding onto his guitar case for dear life. The scars on his left hand are even more visible from the spot where Alex is waiting for the flight attendant to give him the okay to get out of the plane. He still doesn’t think it’s a good idea to ask about them, but he can’t lie to himself any longer – he wants to know _everything_ about Michael Guerin. He’s found out an old soul trapped in a young body, very much like himself – two people brought together by coincidence, who shared much more than just the circumstances that held them hostage for hours in a plane.

They walk together through the finger and they grab their checked luggage, Guerin’s hand brushing against Alex’s, sending jolts of electricity through his body. They reach the end of the halls, approaching the door to the outside world, the silence between them almost unbearable at this point. Alex doesn’t know how to react, he doesn’t know if he should ask for Guerin’s phone number – he doesn’t even know if Guerin’s into guys – but then they’re closing in near the door and Guerin’s turning to him with a small smile playing in his lips. “So, Private,” he begins, but Alex is starting to feel like he can’t breathe for some reason, his own thoughts suffocating him as they run in circles in his mind.

“Uhm, see you around,” he cuts him off, grabbing his bags and walking away. He doesn’t have to look back to know that Guerin’s looking as crushed as Alex is feeling.

_Damn anxiety_, he chides himself. But he’s out the doors now, and his brother and his niece are waving up at him, so he walks up to them and hugs the little girl. When Guerin brushes past him, Alex doesn’t look up. He just stares at his retreating form, as he embraces a blonde tall woman who must be his sister. When he puts his hand in his pocket to pick up a little trinket he’s got for his niece, his fingers touch a piece of paper that wasn’t there before. He frowns, excusing himself to his brother for a moment, and opens the folded sheet.

_Forgot to ask for my number, Private. See you around._

Alex smiles at the numbers scrawled on the paper, and allows his heart to be hopeful just this once.


	2. last pentagram

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are, a couple of months later, with another installment on this arc! The original prompt included Michael writing a song for Alex to get together, and since I couldn't fit it in the first part, I'm trying to do it here!
> 
> I hope you all enjoy this! It's unbeta'ed, all mistakes are my own.

Michael stares at the window for a few seconds before looking back down at his phone. Heʼs lost count on how many times heʼs done the same during the past seven months; he knows he should have given up any hope after the first week and a half, but heʼs stubborn, and heʼs a hopeless romantic. 

He’s still waiting for his soldier to call. 

“Earth to Michael,” he hears Isobel saying, and he snaps out of his spacing out. His sister is looking at him with something undefined in her deep green eyes. “When are you going to stop, Michael?” 

“I donʼt know what youʼre talking about,” he retorts, evasively, trying to deflect the question with another one of his own. “When do we leave for the venue?” 

Isobel taps her heel on the floor, covered in a frayed and stained carpet, and sighs. “He isn’t going to call, Michael,” she tells him. There’s a softness in her voice that he hasnʼt heard in a long time, a softness that speaks of long lost days of youth he spent wishing for a miracle that never happened. 

“I canʼt lose hope,” he mumbles. Then, in a stronger voice to mask his own doubts, he carries on, “I wouldn’t be here if I gave up that easily, Iz. Maybe something happened, maybe he lost my number, maybe—” 

“Michael,” she simply says, stern. He shakes his head. “Michael, there are different ways to contact a folk singer whoʼs got Instagram and Facebook and Twitter. If heʼd wanted to talk to you, he would have. You are reading too much in a conversation over a delayed flight.” 

Michael wants to be mad at her. He wants to yell and kick the ground and tell her it wasnʼt just a conversation over a delayed flight — it was a connection, something heʼd never felt before, and after all these weeks of non-stop working and traveling and despairing over every little detail in his uprising career, Michael has carried a torch for the retired Air Force captain that heʼd wanted to kiss from the moment he heard Alex Manes complaining about not getting to London in time. 

“Maybe I am,” he concedes. 

Alex hasnʼt called him. At first, Michael had been hopeful; heʼd thought Alex was shy, because all the signs pointed at that — the hesitant way with which Alex had approached him, the trembling in his voice from time to time. But Michael had remembered the fire in those chocolate eyes whenever theyʼd talked about their lives, their hobbies, _themselves_, and heʼd known that Alex had wanted to kiss him just as much as Michael had wanted to kiss Alex. 

Seven months later, heʼs back in London, but Alex never called. Maybe itʼs time to give up and accept his defeat. Maybe Isobel is right, and Alex never was into him. 

“Weʼre leaving in a couple of hours,” Isobel tells him after a long pause. “Since soundcheck was earlier this morning, we donʼt have to be there _way_ before the show.” 

Michael sighs. “I’ll go now,” he commands. Isobel looks at him confused, since itʼs usually her who spits out orders. “I _need_ to be near my guitars now,” he explains feebly. “Drop me at the venue, and then you can go shopping until itʼs time for the show. I promise I wonʼt move from there, and I know youʼve been dying to go to Bond Street.” 

“You were listening!” Isobel marvels as Michael huffs out a laugh. 

“Itʼs difficult not to listen when you talk for eight hours straight about the poshest street in all London.” 

She smiles at him, and picks up her purse. “As long as you donʼt budge from the place,” she instructs him. 

“I want to work on some new lyrics,” he promises her. “I’ll be there when you come back.” 

“Deal,” she replies playfully, leading the way out of the hotel room as she makes some phone calls, and into the car that will take him to the Hard Rock Café where he will close his short British tour that got started at the Backroom space of a small place called The Cavendish Arms in Stockwell Station. 

Somewhere between that first gig with roughly fifty people out of the eighty that could fill the room and the Hard Rock Café show, Michael had become some sort of music star. Radio stations kept calling to secure an interview with him, and TV shows and newspapers wanted to quote him on music and touring abroad and life as a musician with a horrible injury in his left hand. He’s been having a blast all this time, but he’s also missed having someone to share it with — someone who isn’t Isobel as her manager or the memories of Max as the voice of his conscience whenever he ended up in the drunk tank. 

When he finally makes it out of the car and waves Isobel goodbye so she can go shopping in Bond Street, Michael decides to enter the building by a back door. There’s already a thick and long line of people waiting to gain access to this gig, and he doesn’t want to be recognized by any of them. He has yet to get used to the feeling of walking around a town he’s never been to and getting cut off by fans who want a picture or an autograph or just to thank him for his lyrics and his songs. In Amsterdam, there was one specific fan who told him that the second half of his album had called so deeply to her that she had felt the need to get a tattoo of some of the lyrics as a permanent reminder that survivors are heroes. 

Michael doesn’t think he can have another encounter like that without having a meltdown, not in his current state of pining after someone who never was interested in him in the first place.

When he enters the green room and sees his guitars, displayed like trophies in a rack across the couch in the middle of the space, Michael lets out a sigh and realizes he’s been holding his breath unwillingly all this time. Maybe he’s been short of breath ever since he met Alex Manes, but the months between that fateful delayed flight and this very same afternoon should have taught Michael a lesson — never to trust anyone outside his family. He glances briefly at his mangled hand. Trust and hope had given him a nightmare of broken bones and destroyed dreams, and he should know better than to allow the disaster to happen ever again.

Yet, he picks up his oldest guitar — a Gibson that Isobel had gifted him with when they graduated high school — and strums the chords aimlessly. There’s no known melody getting out of the motion, just noise as he tries to understand what his heartbeat is telling him. He moves his fingers over the chords with purpose, picks up at the pegs until the guitar is tuned finely, and closes his eyes. Michael knows that losing himself in music is what his soul needs now. Maybe something good might get out of this void he’s been feeling ever since Alex Manes got lost in the crowds at Heathrow, all those months ago.

Before he can realize it, Michael’s playing a new melody. It isn’t his latest hit, nor one of the earliest songs he wrote while still living out of his truck in the middle of the desert, Roswell, New Mexico. It’s something fresh, yet it sounds old — like the sounds of outworn books in an ancient library when opened carelessly. Michael pours his soul into the new song, notes and chords mingling together until his voice finds the right words. He stops playing when his fingertips begin to bleed, and only then, when he lifts his head and looks at the clock on the wall, does he notice the fast pace of time.

“That sounded great,” Isobel tells him from the door, clapping lightly as she steps into the green room. “It’s new, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Michael confesses as he stands up and moves to place the guitar in its spot once again. “Still rough around the edges.”

“You were singing it,” Isobel points out, her hand landing on his arm with a caress that Michael doesn’t think he deserves. “If it were still _rough around the edges_, Mr Perfection, you wouldn’t have been singing the lyrics.”

“It just—” Michael struggles to find the perfect words. “It just came to me, just that. Like—” He trails off, Isobel staring at him patiently while he fights to speak up his feelings. “Like a long lost love that just came back from war.”

“Or a retired Air Force captain who you can’t simply forget about,” she offers. Michael sighs. “It’s fine, Michael. I get the feeling, I really do. Maybe you could use the song tonight? Sing it, get a hang on what the audience thinks of it. I’m sure they’ll love it.”

Michael can’t help but think that Isobel’s looking like she knows some big secret he doesn’t, but he can’t blame her for looking smug after having sold out the Hard Rock Café in London. “I’ll think about it.”

“Do it,” Isobel presses on. “I’m never wrong, Michael. I can read people like open books. You need to sing it, and the audience needs to hear it. It’s going to be a hit.”

Michael nods once, curtly, and shoos her out of the room to start getting ready for his gig. It’s been a while since he last performed in London — he’s been touring Europe, some small venues in Madrid and Lisbon, a few bigger ones in Rome and Amsterdam, and then he’s been in Berlin singing in front of crowds standing in one huge park. He’s a bit nervous; he wipes his hands on his jeans a few seconds before his name is called up and he gets to step onto the stage.

He scans the crowd gathered to hear him sing with one hand covering his eyes, and he’s taken aback by the large number of people cheering on him. He smiles bashfully, and sits on the stool placed in the middle of the stage for him. “Good night, London,” he begins. “It’s so good to be back!”

He starts the show with his latest single, which has been a huge success in Europe, and other songs tag along while he works up the courage to actually sing the one he’s written in roughly two hours. It’s a risky move, to present something so unedited and unapproved to a crowd while being the relative newcomer, but his soul wants the song to be known. He wants _Alex_ to get word of it, to know how Michael feels. He wants Alex to just listen. It can’t be healthy, this obsession he has, but Michael can’t help it. All it took was an eight-hour flight from Dallas to London to fall in love with a complete stranger, but their connection had been cosmic.

“The next song,” he whispers into the microphone, adjusting the Gibson on his lap. He looks at the side, where Isobel is already clapping at him. “The next song is still in the works, I just recently wrote it. As recently as in, right before getting out here? So you’re the first ones to ever listen to it.” He falters, tripping over his words in his haste to get the next sentences out in a rush of words and breaths. “It’s about found loves that get lost in the midst of heartbreak. It’s for the person who saw me for who I was, not the singer I’m becoming. You know who you are.”

And then he pours his whole being into the chords, into the words that fall out of his mouth in a tumbling river of feelings and unrhyming lines — _unburden my soul and see right through me, you’re the one my heart sings to, you’re the one I’ve been waiting my whole life_ — and for three minutes and a half the world dissolves and it’s only Michael and the memory of a kiss that could have been but never existed. 

“_Light up my path, complete me_,” he sings softly into the microphone, the last notes dying slowly between his fingers. “_Unburden my soul, claim me and make me feel whole_. Thanks, London,” he says immediately after finishing the last word, standing up and running off the stage before the tears that have been welling up behind his eyelids fall down his cheeks.

“Fuck,” he swears as he stomps into the green room, the guitar still hanging off his back from the straps that secure it to his body. “This wasn’t supposed to happen!” he laments.

“What exactly?” comes a voice at his back. Michael freezes; he hasn’t heard this voice in seven months. He refuses to turn around, wondering if he’s definitely losing his mind and hallucinating. “Writing a beautiful song about how an idiot I’ve been?”

And then, Michael has to turn around and face Alex Manes, standing in the doorway to his green room, one hand on the frame and his body heavily leaning onto a crutch as though he would fall if he weren’t holding himself up onto it. He looks exactly like he’d done seven months before as Michael looked at him one last time before leaving the airport. Alex smiles shyly but doesn’t move.

“You haven’t been an idiot,” Michael manages to say. He thinks he won’t be able to properly function any longer if Alex keeps watching at him like that — like he’s worth all the good things in the world.

“I lost your number,” Alex confesses, and Michael sends Isobel a mental _told you so_ even if he knows she’d just shrug and tell him that it was one possibility. “And then, I was too chicken to actually try and contact you.”

“It’s okay,” Michael says, and then falls silent. The quiet drags on for so long that Alex starts to move backward, as if sensing that he’s not welcome. It takes Michael a second to catch up, and when he does Alex is almost halfway onto the corridor. “Hey, wait!” he exclaims as he moves forward and grabs Alex by his arm. The proximity makes his heart beat faster, harder, and he can feel Alex’s pulse coming to life underneath Michael’s fingertips. “How did you—”

“I knew you were back in London,” Alex explains quietly, the sound of his voice barely a thread above a whisper. “I’ve been here for quite a while, helping my brother. I didn’t have anywhere else to go. And, well, I knew you’d be back and I—”

“You were waiting for me,” Michael finishes, his mind racing a mile a second over all the possibilities. “Just like I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Your sister let me in,” Alex tells him, chin up and gaze steady, and Michael feels him so close that Alex’s breath is mixing with his. “Kinda recognized me from the crutch alone.”

“Might have ranted a bit about you,” Michael confesses. “I’m so glad you’re here, Private.”

“That’s what your sister said—”

“Are you going to keep talking about my sister?” Michael cuts him off playfully, one hand sliding up Alex’s arm to his neck until Michael’s able to pull Alex flush against his body. 

“What do you suggest I’d do?” Alex retaliates, voice dropping an octave and eyes fanning Michael’s fluttery heart. 

He has an answer for that, Michael does. He swears he does, but his mind shortcircuits and all he’s able to do is lean forward until he’s all over Alex, despite the former pilot being a little bit taller than Michael himself. “This,” he says as all warning before diving in to claim Alex’s mouth as his.

There’s no hesitation on his part, nor on Alex’s, their tongues dancing together as they kiss in a backlit green room after his latest show. Michael doesn’t know where the future might take him, and he doesn’t want to think of all the injuries his past is peppered with, because all he wants to experience is this present, this right here and right now when he gets to touch and to kiss and to feel Alex Manes as his, after all these weeks of pining and suffering, of not knowing if a promise never made would be enough.

Now Michael knows that it is enough.


End file.
